Monthly Archives: September 2009

The U.S. likes to be number one in everything – it’s just the American way. But, according to PandaLabs, the U.S. is going to have to settle for 9th place overall when it comes to malware infected computers. This is one area however, where not being number one is definitely better.

But that’s no reason to be complacent. PandaLabs, Panda Security’s malware analysis and detection laboratory, just revealed that it has detected a 15 percent increase in the total number of malware-infected computers in September, in comparison to the previous month of August.

According to data gathered from users that scanned and disinfected their computers with the free Panda ActiveScan online antivirus, the average infection ratio rose to 59 percent, the highest rate this year.

In comparison to the infection rates of 29 countries, the U.S. ranks ninth with an infection ratio of 58.25 percent, just below the worldwide average. Taiwan has the most infected PCs, with a 69.10 percent corruption, followed by Russia and China at 67.99 percent and 61.97 percent, respectively. The country with the least infections is Norway at 39.60 percent.

According to Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs, “There is a false sense of security, as users perceive there to be no real danger at the moment. When their computers get infected, they rarely notice any symptoms.”

Panda’s study revealed that U.S. computers are infected by the most dangerous malware strains: Trojans, followed by adware, worms and viruses.

“This is a clear sign that hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated,” explains Corrons. “Cybercriminals have found news ways to spread their creations, frequently exploiting the latest news stories to launch attacks through social networks, videos, and email. The huge amount of Trojans in circulation is due to the spectacular increase in the number of banker Trojans aimed at stealing user data.”

Over 150 BILLION unsolicited e-mail messages are being distributed by compromised computers every day, which means that botnets are responsible for approximately 88 percent of all spam out there today.

Recent closures of rogue Internet Service Providers McColo, PriceWert and Real Host have significantly hurt the two biggest botnets of 2009: Cutwail and Srizbi, which at their peak where each responsible for 45.6 percent and 50 percent of all global spam, respectively. Since then, Cutwail has been bumped to the third most powerful botnet and Srizbi has disappeared.

Here’s a look at how some of the newest botnets stack up:

Grum – the most active botnet, responsible for over 23 percent of global spam. Since June, Grum has increased its output per bot massively, pushing it to the top of the current “worst offenders”.

Bobax – has overtaken Cutwail as a top botnet, and is responsible for 15.7 percent of spam. Previously one of the smaller, less active botnets, Bobax has now quadrupled in size and its output per bot per minute is now the highest MessageLabs has ever seen.

Rustock – the largest botnet of all, with an estimated 1.3 to 1.9 million compromised computers in its control. Rustock has roughly doubled in size since June, but doesn’t have a high output. What sets this botnet apart from the rest is its highly automated cycle of spamming activity: spam from this botnet accelerates from 3am EST, peaks around 7am EST and dies down by 7pm EST.

Mega D – has been losing bots quite rapidly. It is now only one tenth the size it was in June. However, it’s now working its bots harder than ever, 2nd only to the output of Bobax in spam per bot per minute!

Maazben – meet the newest botnet, and one to watch in the future. Currently focused on sending out casino-spam, Maazben first appeared in May and has been growing the number of bots rapidly in recent weeks while keeping its output low.

What else can we expect from these powerful machines and how can businesses safeguard against their threats? You can find additional information on this and other online threats here.

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Can You Hear Me Now? iPod Volume Restrictions On The Way – iPods in Europe are about to get a lot more quiet? Regulators have released a new set of standards governing how loud portable music players can go, and that means the default max volume is going take a big dip from where it currently sits.

This Week’s Top 10 Spyware Threats (The Threat Level remains at Elevated) – Some things to look out for this week are the following. There are a couple of spam campaigns: a Zeus Trojan in spam campaign under guise of a notice from the IRS. Subject line: “Notice of Underreported Income.” And a Facebook worm hijacks wall posts. It arrives as a message containing a malicious link with text: “lmao! I can’t stop laughing at you in this pic when did you do this?” Watch out for these!

IT Security: Maxims for the ages – Steve Gibson in his latest Security Now podcast mentions one person’s quest to enlighten the rest of us about managing security. To me, his words ring true.

Can you upgrade an old XP PC to Windows 7? Should you? – How old is too old? I had a chance to think about this question twice over the weekend. Once while pondering my fifty-something birthday (as of today, I am the same age as Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons combined), and the other while deciding whether to upgrade my friend Lisa’s four-year-old Sony notebook to Windows 7.

Off Topic:

Evolution of Microsoft Windows: 1985 – 2009 – It all began in Plaza Hotel, New York City on the 10th of November 1983. Two Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates officially announced their corporation’s first and next-generation graphical user interface operating system – Microsoft Windows.

Lifehacker: How to Choose the Fastest Line at the Market – One of the more frustrating parts of grocery shopping is waiting in line, and determining which line will get you through the quickest somehow becomes a big deal. Blogger and math teacher Dan Meyer drops a little science on this common dilemma.

Today’s Quote:

“We as a society chose to get more connected, and one of the perils of doing that is, the more connected you are with everyone, the more connected you are with malicious people as well”.

– Microsoft security manager Scott Culp

Today’s Free Downloads:

Microsoft Security Essentials – Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Get a Visual Overview of Your Firefox Browsing History – Enter History Tree, a Firefox add-on that gives you a visual overview of your browsing history. You can view this history as either a tree (hence the name) or a grid of site thumbnails. Click the image at right to see an example of the former.

QTTabBar – QTTabBar is a add-in for Windows Explorer that adds tabs and several other features to the Explorer interface. With it, you’ll be able to quickly switch between folders by simply clicking a tab, as well as being able to perform some basic functions with new icons across the top of Explorer.

Blaze – Blaze helps you more quickly start programs, and a whole lot more. When Blaze recognizes that you’re doing something with a repetitive pattern–such as typing a sequence of numbers or moving files that all have the same word in the name–it offers to automate the task for you

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Running on Windows 7 has loads of benefits over running on Windows XP Pro, including an improvement in the Windows Task Manager tool, which finally shows “running processes”.

But Windows Task Manager still remains a bit of a tease. Sure it provides you with some usable information, but it falls far short of providing you with all the information that you really need. A recent free offering from Auslogics, of Auslogics Disk Defrag fame, takes up the challenge where Windows Task Manager leaves off.

A very simple interface makes it easy to use Auslogics Task Manager, for both novices and pros, to manage computer resources.

Windows task manager (on Win 7)

Versus Auslogics Task Manager (on Win 7)

Fast facts:

View application and process

Shows all open files including the application that has locked it

Provides a security rating

View open files

Shows CPU usage

View memory and disk utilization

Shows Internet traffic and priority

End or freeze a process

Adjust CPU affinity and priority

This is a terrific free application and I have added it to my geek toolbox. Since malware can often restrict access to the Windows Task Manager, this application is good insurance to have handy.

Note: also available in a portable version that is just right for geeks on the go.

Lifehacker: Turn Your Windows 7 PC Into a Wireless Hotspot – Everybody’s got a wireless network at home, but if you’ve ever wanted to get your iPod touch, iPhone, or other wireless device connected, but all you’ve got is a wired network at work, school, or elsewhere, Windows 7 makes this process trivial.

Disable the log-on screen in Windows XP and Vista – The program I used to customize the Windows Welcome screen—TweakNow PowerPack 2009—is the same tool I used to disable the log-on screen on my Vista laptop. Click Windows Secret in the utility’s left pane and choose User Accounts. Click “Enable auto log-on,” select the account you want to log into automatically, enter the account’s password and domain name (if necessary), and click Save. The next time you start the PC, Windows will start and open that account automatically.

Don’t Tell Insecure End Users They’re Stupid – Many security breaches are a result of administrative error, inattention and ignorance. Such insecurities often result in solution providers being called in to clean up the messes created by in-house, inept security managers. But does cleaning up security messes require telling end users their stupid?

Is cloud anti-virus ready for the mass-market? – There was much talk at last week’s Virus Bulletin conference about “the cloud” and the part it can play in protecting computer users from security threats. Sophos blogger Chester Wisniewski wonders if those who believe this approach gives complete security actually have their head in the clouds.

Today’s Quote:

Today’s Free Downloads:

Google’s Picasa – Peer at it closely and you’ll find an app teeming with features that do everything from import to edit to upload to share photos and videos online.

Foxit Reader – Foxit is the only PDF reader I use. It’s been a long while since I’ve run across a PDF file that Foxit Reader doesn’t handle perfectly. It takes up far less disk space than Adobe Reader, and it’s faster.

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Code breakthrough delivers safer computing – Computer researchers at UNSW and NICTA have achieved a breakthrough in software which will deliver significant increases in security and reliability and has the potential to be a major commercialisation success.

Malware torrent delivered over Google, Yahoo! ad services – End users visiting sites that used the ad syndication services often saw nothing more than a brief flash as the malware-laced ads caused their browsers to open – and then close – a booby-trapped PDF file. But behind the scenes, the payload installed Win32/Alureon, a trojan that drops a backdoor on infected machines.

Lifehacker: Five Best Twitter Clients – Twitter has risen to prominence as the most popular place to share your thoughts in short snippets. If you’re underwhelmed with the Twitter web site and looking for more features, you’ll definitely want to check out the five Twitter clients showcased here.

Walking Through 40 Years of Hard Disk History – Slide Show: IDEMA, the International Disk Drive and Materials Association, hosted its annual DISKCON conference in Santa Clara, Calif., Sept. 23 and 24. Included as a bonus was a chronological display of history-making hard disk drives assembled by longtime industry analyst and consultant Jim Porter.

Off Topic:

Linux Knowledge Base and Tutorial – Looking for an in-depth and easy-to-understand introduction to Linux? Then look no further! We don’t just show you how to execute a handful of commands and use a few utilities. The Linux Tutorial goes beyond the basics, providing you with the knowledge necessary to get the most out of your Linux system.

When Assessing Risks, Our Emotions Can Lead Us Astray – If you find yourself more concerned about highly publicized dangers that grab your immediate attention such as terrorist attacks, while forgetting about the more mundane threats such as global warming, you’re not alone.

Today’s Quote:

“Law is mind without reason”.

– Aristotle

Today’s Free Downloads:

Hotspot Shield – Public networks (both wired and wireless) are great. After all, what would life be without connecting while at airports, hotels and coffee shops? However, the danger to your personal data exists even if you connect to a fee based open network. Thats why AnchorFree is pleased to offer Hotspot Shield. Our application keeps your Internet connection secure and anonymous on public networks.

HWiNFO32 – If you want to know absolutely everything there is to know about your hardware, you’d do well to download the free HWiNFO32. This freebie provides an astonishing amount of information about every aspect of your hardware, and it’s extremely easy to use.

Image Inc: Image Compositing Tool – The purpose of this utility is to blend existing images in a very fast and easy way, using a layer mask for transparency. The process is simple … load the base picture followed by a top layer image, then add a mask and the program automatically merges everything together. Ideal for anyone who doesn’t want to use a major graphics application for this task.

TweakVI Basic – No question about it, ff you want to do some serious Windows Vista tweaking and hacking, you need this TweakVI. Microsoft has gone out of its way to make Vista unfriendly to power users; it’s more difficult to tweak than XP is. But this great freebie gives you hundreds of ways to adjust the operating system, tasks that otherwise would be extremely difficult to do.

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When a free application is downloaded over 45,000 times from your site, like Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware has been at my site, you just have to know this application is a winner.

The free version of this speed demon (it’s faster at scanning than any anti-malware program I’ve tested in the last 2 years), is used by millions of people worldwide to protect their computers.

I run Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware every day, as a secondary malware scanner, since I have absolutely no faith that a single security application offers adequate protection.

Depending on a single security applications to provide the ultimate in protection, is an absolute “non-starter”. A single security applications does not, and never has had the ability to this, despite the commonly help belief to the contrary.

It’s important to note that the real time protection module is disabled in the free version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware. Less critical, is the disabling of scheduled scanning, and scheduled updating in the free version.

Each day as I manually update the definition database I’ve noticed that typically, the definition database has been updated 3/5 times in the previous 24 hours. Since study after study indicate that new malware is created at the rate of 20,000 new versions every single day, it’s easy to see that Malwarebytes’ is being proactive to these conditions.

A simple, intuitive, and easy to use interface, makes Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware straightforward to setup, customize and run, for both less experienced and expert users alike.

Since real time protection is disabled, I would not recommend that you use this free version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware as a stand alone primary security application, since it simply will not offer you adequate protection with this restriction. Instead, use it as I do, as an on-demand, secondary scanner.

Despite this real-time protection limitation in the free version, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware has an excellent reputation (shared by me), as a first class security application, for its ability to identify and remove adware, Trojans, key-loggers, home page hijackers and other malware threats.

Numerous users of this Blog, have commented on Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware’s ability to deal with one of the real scourges currently making the rounds on the Internet; rogue security applications.

As a full fledged security application, with all of its features unlocked; real-time protection, scheduled scanning, and scheduled updating, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware is a terrific value at $24.95 US.

Regular readers of this site are aware that I generally do not recommend the purchase of commercial software, but in this case, I have to do so. This application is just that good.

Fast facts:

Blazing speed on quick scanning

Full scans for all drives.

Daily database updates

Quarantine function

Additional utilities for manual malware removal

Multi-lingual support

Command line support for quick scanning

Context menu integration to scan files on demand

Quick summary: Discovered malware, including 3 Trojans, not found by SpyBot, or AVG, on a recent test on my test bed systems.

Old advice that still applies:

There is no one anti-malware tool, that is likely to identify and remove, all of the malware that infests the cyber world.

To ensure maximum safety, it’s important to have layered defenses in the ongoing fight against malware.

In other words, it’s necessary to have front line line active malware defenses which provide real time protection, coupled with a secondary malware scanner which should be employed on a regular basis, I recommend a minimum of once a week, to ensure your computer stays clean.

Another great free alternative:

The free version of SUPERAntiSpyware despite it’s lack of real-time protection deserves its reputation as a first class security application, and it’s definitely worth considering adding to your security toolbox as a secondary line of defense.

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